


Christchurch

by butwordsarewind (sungabraverday)



Series: Cities Headcanons [3]
Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types, Paris Burning (thecitysmith)
Genre: Cities, Gen, Personification
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-11
Updated: 2013-06-11
Packaged: 2017-12-14 16:06:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 648
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/838766
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sungabraverday/pseuds/butwordsarewind
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Christchurch always used to be told she was beautiful. Then came the earthquake and with her body covered in scars and racked with loss she finally believed it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Christchurch

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Paris Burning](https://archiveofourown.org/works/825130) by [thecitysmith](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thecitysmith/pseuds/thecitysmith). 



Christchurch was beautiful, her people said. She was young, finally grown into her own. She had scars, sure, for no City can grow without them, but they were small marks, mostly spidery thin silver threads of scrapes and skirmishes long forgotten that could be disguised with ease. And sometimes she would, though the mark that was the Ballantyne’s fire could only be hidden with long sleeves. She was ashamed of how few she had, how insignificant her history, so sometimes it was better to pretend she had none at all. At least it made her people happy. Her hair glowed the glorious orange of the oak trees in fall, and she was beautiful.

Then the earth moved.

The first time it happened, it didn’t leave deep marks, just lots of them. Shallow bruises and cuts, things that healed easily. But while they healed fast, there was a deeper pain that Christchurch couldn’t explain. She paced her streets as white as a ghost, shaking like a leaf in the wind, not hiding any more, her web of scars bright against even paler skin.

The earth kept moving, and still moves.

But then what Christchurch had most feared happened, seven months later, a quake closer and shallower and so much more dangerous, and shook the city to its core. The buildings fell in the heart of the city and she could feel her people trapped in the rubble, caught, screaming, in pain, dying. The CTV building, the home of her people’s voice, collapsed. And then went up in flames.

And she could feel them, and she could not help. She screamed, and she tried, but she could not walk. It was not her own injuries, for the dust and bricks left but minor marks, but her city, the people, the streets, the buildings, the cracks that ran so deep that even the bones in her legs had fractured just as her lands, her streets, her buildings, had fractured. Not just her people, but people from all over trying to make her city their new home, and she could feel them and she could hear them and she could do nothing. She tried, begged the world to help, told them what she could feel, where they were, anything she could do because they were hers and it was agony. And the city shook and cracked and the building burned.

185 lives. 185 empty white chairs.

It wasn’t that the earthquake had destroyed her - it would take more than the rumble of the earth to do that - it was just that these weren’t surface scars. These were in her bones, cracks and breaks, and she would not heal until her city did. And there was a hole the size of the Central Business District in her heart as the buildings came down to begin anew, and prevent this from happening again. It would take time, years, decades.

She can walk now, but she’s still crippled, and it hurts. So much needs to come down before they can rebuild and the life and joy can fill her streets and her heart once more. Her heart still hurts but her legs are finally healing, more scars than flesh, and weak. She will heal. She will be strong again. She is strong; her people are strong. They will survive and they will adapt, and they already have.

But this disaster, this curse, has reminded her who she really is, behind the façade that she used to put on. She will never pretend again be the demure City she once tried to be. She remembers the taste of human flesh and the cries of her people screaming. She remembers the crackling of fires and the calls of birds long gone. She remembers eerie silence and dust, so much dust.

She is covered in scars, and she is beautiful. And her hair? Is the colour of fire.


End file.
